Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a field of data processing, and in particular, to a processor and a circuit board including the processor.
Description of the Related Art
With the function of a processor becoming more and more powerful and the integration of the processor becoming higher and higher, the requirement for power management is also higher and higher. However, the present processor has much higher transients in a power management process, and the power management also has some problems, such as the delay. These problems seriously affect the performance and the reliability of a system.
The processor includes a central processor, a graphics processor and so on. In the follow, take the graphics processor as an example to illustrate. In existing technology, a graphics processing unit (GPU) and a power management unit are two individual parts in the graphics processor. The design and the manufacture of the power management unit and those of the GPU are separated. The two parts communicate with each other through a control bus and some interfaces. FIG. 1 illustrates a processor 100 in the prior art, including a GPU 101, a power management unit 104 and an external power supply component 105. The GPU 101 sends a digital control signal for voltage from the control interface thereof to the power management unit 104 via a control bus 103 according to such as the I2C protocol and the Voltage Identification (VID) technology. The power management unit 104 sends a pulse-width modulation (PWM) signal to the external power supply component 105 according to the received digital control signal. The external power supply component 105 outputs a power supply signal according to the received PWM signal. The power supply signal was input into the GPU 101 via a current path 106. During this process, because the GPU 101 and the power management unit 104 are two individual parts, there are transients and noises in the processor 100.
Therefore, in order to solve the above-mentioned problems, there is a need of providing a processor which has much better performance and much simpler structure.